


Homecoming

by LiteralCaskOfAmontillado



Series: Eiriceacht [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Depression, Gen, How Do I Tag, Immortals, Mutual Pining, Sarcastic Angel, i guess?, tmw your best friend isn't a statue anymore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:34:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26076523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiteralCaskOfAmontillado/pseuds/LiteralCaskOfAmontillado
Summary: My heart is beating from me, I am standing all alone. Please call me only if you are coming homeAfter a series of crippling blows, Heresy is granted a reprieve.
Series: Eiriceacht [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832512
Kudos: 1





	Homecoming

Her bedroom was her inner sanctum, fortified by tons of steel and hidden electrocution panels. And best of all? It was safe. 

There were no dead fiancés in here. No betrayals, or beheadings. Somehow the memories were all still here, and hurt her just as badly as the knife that had taken out her left eye just a few weeks ago. The scar was still red and angry, and if she bumped it in her sleep, it woke her up instantly. Usually, it drove her to tears, even if it wasn’t the ache of her scars that bothered her.

So when Heresy’s comm link beeped frantically, she groaned, hands reaching out from under her pile of blankets to silence the loud alerts. The vibrating device continued to buzz, and Heresy reached out again to turn it off. It was quiet again, and her hand retreated to the warmth underneath her covers.

Heresy didn’t want to be a leader again, not yet. She wanted to sleep away her sorrow at the loss of Crucible for just a little while longer. 

The comm link went off again, despite being entirely turned off, and Heresy finally pushed her covers off, and begrudgingly sat up on her bed. Whoever it was that could still get through after she had turned the device entirely off obviously needed her attention.

“What?” she snapped tiredly, and the other end of the line paused briefly.

“I need you to come down to the war room. It’s urgent,” Melachor the Seraphim stated, and Heresy could hear the irate tone in her angel’s voice.

“Can’t you, or Sindri handle it? I was sleeping and I’m not even dressed,” Heresy groaned, even though she was already climbing out of bed.

“No, I _can’t_ handle this, and neither can Sindri. You need to get out of bed, and come down here,” another of the Seraphim’s signature stern pauses, “ _Now_ , Silvertongue”

Heresy groaned into the comm link, taking it away from her ear, and looking it over. The little display screen was black, and the indicator lights didn’t flash with their usual indication colours.

“I turned my comms line off, how’d you even get through?” Heresy asked, carefully rubbing sleep from her eyes as she shuffled to her closet. 

“I’m an angel of the lord. The state between a comm line being on or off makes no difference to me,” Mel scoffed, and Heresy could hear the way her angel rolled her eyes, “Are you coming down here, or do I have to drag you down here?”

Heresy looked at herself in the mirror, pulling off her pyjamas and tossing them in the growing pile of laundry beside her closet door. The scar running into her hairline looked a little better, but was still a gnarled fusion of traumatised skin.

“I’m coming down there. I hope it’s not too dire that I can’t change first,” she twisted to check her side as she spoke, prodding the superficial wounds that had grazed her rib cage.

“It’s not. And Heresy?” another pause, “wear your eye patch”

The kineticist stopped, halfway through pulling her dark pants over her long legs. Every member of the Foggy Dew had already seen the solid sapphire that had replaced her original left eye, and although it looked strange, the very few times they’d seen her with it had gone smoothly. She couldn’t figure out who would need to be braced to see the Eye of All secured inside her eye socket.

“Why’s that?” Heresy asked into her comm, but found herself looking at the earpiece again with confusion. 

This time the device was truly off. 

Heresy saw the gathering at the open doors of the war room. That was her first tip off that something wasn’t quite right. Usually, they would have all crowded inside and waited for her to join them around the long table in the center of the room, but not this morning. Sid Sindri waved to her, the tiny sergeant at arms standing in the shadow of Melachor’s massive white wings. Heresy waved back, closing the distance between the two others. The worry on their faces was palpable, and it made Heresy’s empty stomach curl.

“There are two paths you can go by” Sid’s little speaker squawked and Heresy realised that she wasn’t prepared to be assaulted by Robert Plant’s awful voice so soon after waking up, but she acknowledged their greeting with a quizzical look.

Melachor inclined her head towards the open doors, and shifted herself to block them, her massive wings casting shadows down the hallway. 

“I need you to listen to me, and handle this with the level head I know you have, Heresy,” Melachor practically begged.

“Well that doesn’t make me uneasy at all. What’s going on in there, Mel?” Heresy asked with a chuckle that hid her worry, searching the seraphim’s stony face.

The captain looked between her medic and sergeant at arms, uneasily chuckling again.

“If I had to guess, I’d say you two just saw a ghost or something,” Heresy’s face fell at the look that Sid and Melachor shared, and her heart skipped in her chest.

“You should just go inside,” Melachor replied, her wings drooping sadly, “we’ll be here waiting for you”

Heresy straightened her wild curls, and Sid raised two thumbs up as she began to pass around Melachor. They meant well, but all their motion did was make Heresy queasier. Her teammates stepped aside, and Heresy’s gut roiled from the sight before her.

She had been expecting to see a man with snowy white hair, intense, piercing eyes. Her late fiance’s image had yet to fade from her memories. Heresy yearned for him like an infant yearns for their security blanket. If Crucible had been brought back somehow, he could explain everything. That was all she wanted, afterall. An explanation.

Instead sitting there in her seat at the head of the table was John Firestorm. It wouldn’t have felt like such a crippling blow if the last time they’d seen each other was six hundred years ago, when John had turned himself into a statue. On accident, of course. But he’d done it to protect her and Ava, her best friend and partner at the time.

“When did you make friends with an angel?” John looked up from the thick dossier she’d left behind three weeks ago, seeing Heresy for the first time, “Oh man, cool eye patch Harry”

She felt like she was suffocating, like she was getting beaten into the floor again, like she was fighting for her life again by her own true love. It had been almost 600 years of talking so easily to her friend when he was frozen as a statue. Now that he was human again. Heresy Silvertongue couldn’t find the words that she needed to say. John had been the first person that started the nickname Harry, and because of him it had stuck. She felt like she was suffocating.

“Kinda weird though, ‘cause we’re not at sea. As far as I can tell we’re underground somewhere, so what gives?” John asked, closing the folder, and stood from the chair with a cocky grin on his face.

In his usual Levi’s and aviator jacket- the same ones he’d worn into those caves with her and Ava, so long ago- he began to saunter across the war room, arms outstretched for a hug, but Heresy stepped back again. John stopped, looking at her with confusion.

“You look different,” he stopped, eyebrows raised, “in a good way! Great, even! Like, uh, like you’re not ugly or anything. You just look different. I like it”

He was smiling, and Heresy was shaking. She knew that John could feel it in the air. She could see it in his eyes- he wanted to hug her, like usual. Did she actually look sad? Or was it just those feelings that had slowly been building for her making him over think his approach? He didn’t know, but he had a lot of questions. All he wanted was a quick and easy explanation.

“John, I need you to tell me what year it is,” Heresy spoke calmly, but kept her distance as if her life depended on it.

“Why? What’s going on, Harry?” John sighed, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and stopping his approach. 

That nickname, again. It stung like a skinned knee, or a fresh bruise, aimed squarely at her heart.

“John, tell me what _fucking_ year it is,” He could see the anger rising, from the way her hand was outstretched toward him, as if she was pushing him away. The stern lines of her face, the ones he’d fallen in love with, weren’t creased as if she was happy to see him, either.

“It’s 2062,” he shrugged with an annoyed huff, “happy?”

Heresy choked at his response. She gagged on her words, and stepped back again. John truly didn’t like that reaction, and stayed put, despite how badly he wanted to rush to her side. He saw the tears run out from under her eyepatch, and down her cheeks, face reddening as Heresy tried to hold back her sobs.

“You’ve been gone for so long…” she said quietly and John visibly cringed the way her one eye widened with the agonising words she spoke, “and I don’t even think you understand why”

“ _Gone_? Where the hell did I go, Harry?” John stepped closer to her, and she held her hand out to stop him.

“John, it’s 2678,” Heresy sighed, finally stepping to meet him. 

It felt like a punch in the gut, and his world spun. John leaned on a nearby chair, and Heresy thought she might have to hold him up.

“What happened to me?” John asked, and Heresy’s eye watched him carefully.

“You don’t remember? At all?” Heresy asked, and John slowly shook his head.

“I just remember we were going into those caves to chase after Monroe and his cronies, but that’s it,” John shrugged, trying his best “but clearly something happened. I’ve been gone for _six hundred years_ ”

She nodded, affirming what he had just reiterated to her. Heresy cupped his cheek in her hand, and moved him gently to look at her. It was hard for him to do so, she looked so different now. One eye socket was covered by a black eye patch, and the eye he could see was tired.

“You used the some really archaic magic, and it turned you into a statue,” she sighed, her hand slipping from his face, but John grabbed it before it fell to her side, holding on for dear life, begging for the answers “you saved Ava and I from Monroe’s exploding minions, and I’m forever grateful for that, but. Well, you see what that cost you now”

John let go of her hand, any trace of his cool and collected attitude shattered by Heresy’s confirmation. He took a step away from her, drawing a shaky breath that chilled the air of the war room.

“Six hundred years, I guess,” John huffed, sitting down in a nearby chair, and Heresy watched him sadly as he pulled away from her completely.

“I don’t know if you saw everything in your room downstairs but,” she walked to sit down on the floor in front of him, “I’ve been compiling things for you. Pictures, and journals. Let me know if you need help switching between formats. I had to change things up after a few hundred years”

John knew that she was trying to comfort him, to crack a joke and make him laugh. He just had to, she hoped. It was her way to cope, even after all of these years, with the horrible things that were thrust on the poor woman. He stood, shaking as he did so. Heresy scrambled to her feet, and she watched her old friend with a careful ferocity.

“I think I need to go read, maybe?” and Heresy just nodded.

“I’ll be waiting here,” she smiled, and John refrained from saying that she’d already _been_ waiting there for him this whole time, and that he was sorry she had to wait more.

**Author's Note:**

> Throwback to my professor giving me a whole lot of shit for this entry in the story LMAO. Speaking of professors, I start my fall semester tomorrow. I'll still be uploading but it will be pretty slow from here on out.
> 
> Catch me on Tumblr as literal-cask-of-amontillado, and thanks for being here, it means a lot to me!


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